Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 Trailer.

I just purchased Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part one and watched it for the first time last Friday. Today I watched the trailer for part 2 and I'm very excited to see the conclusion. It looks like it's interpreted from the book and it looks like it was really done well. I can't wait for it to come out. This summer is going to be awesome. 

Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 MOVIE Review

This last Friday I was able to go watch Atlas Shrugged Part 1. First of all this particular review is going to be as apolitical as possible. I hope to make this review more about the quality of the film in terms of story, plot, acting etc. With that in mind just remember that this movie is implicitly political.

So the filming of this movie is every bit as high quality as any Hollywood film. The images are well framed and artfully done. The color doesn't seems to lend to anything other than "realistic" portrayal of the world that we live in now. The book was written over 50 years ago and if I were to create an artistic version of this I would give the colors a hue that gives a little more noire and perhaps even a sepia tone...but since they placed this movie in the near future it made sense that they would use real colors and hues.

The plot was strictly following the book...which is both good and bad. Ayn Rand was over the top in so many ways and it was really hard to overcome that in her plot and the stilted and halting way the dialog progressed was unfortunately carried over to the movie. People do not speak the way that Ayn Rand wrote her dialog. On the contrary she seemed to think that people used words that were on the average over 3 syllables long. Her characters are deep but in an almost inaccessible way. People find traits that they have in common with Hank, Dagny, and others but in the end they don't identify with any of the characters completely.

After watching this movie I find the same flaws from the book. The screen writers needed to interpret Rand's novel in a way that would make it more modern and accessible. If/when they produce the remaining parts of the story they need to put more effort into making the dialog smooth, natural, and most importantly believable. If they overcome that the production quality is sufficient to give them a shot at making this a great movie rather than a passable book conversion. Because ultimately that is what this is, nothing more than a copy of the book in an audio visual form. If this is to reach the heights that are due Rand's greatness they need to allow the medium to be the message and not be subject to a strict conversion of her original text. On a scale of 1-5 I give this a 3. Have you seen this movie? Tell me what you think.

Pretty sure I hate car repairs!

I hate car repairs

So we're a day from leaving for vacation...the first in a very long time and I keep hearing a high whine like a jet engine from our car. At first I thought it was the new tires we put on it...then I started thinking it was something else. Karen's dad checked it out and agreed that it was not the tires. Took it in last night to get it checked out. Guy says that it's probably the rear differential pinion bearing. Estimates that it would cost $500-700 to replace the damaged part. So I'm thinking 'this is not good...I hope we can get it fixed tomorrow so we can still leave for our vacation'. This morning is the day we're supposed to leave. We'd like to leave town around 2:00 p.m. after the kids are out of school. So we call a couple of places for an estimate...the first guy we call says $800 but it could be something other than the pinion bearing and he'd need to look at it but it's not likely he could finish the job today. So we take it to our "guys" who have done all the repairs and maintenance on this and our other vehicles. They take it out for a drive and come back and demonstrate that it's not likely the bearings but rather the "gears" in the rear differential. So I call my little brother who is far more mechanically inclined and he says that if it's the whole back end he could replace it in no time flat. He also suggests that we find one at a junk yard and get it for a lot less than a new one ($1500-2500) and he could put it in really quick. So I call Karen and talk to her and get all snippy with her (Sorry) and now I'm just feeling bad and wanted to vent just a little. I'll complete the post when the damage is done...but don't count on me being a happy camper over this.

UPDATE: So the final tally is coming in at $1960...yup there is no question that I HATE car repairs. The gears in the differential were chunking off and we won't be leaving until tomorrow...sometime. Meaning we probably won't leave for vacation until mid-day tomorrow. Today just got a whole lot worse. 

Pia Toscano American Idol Winner?

Image via Wikipedia
So last week America said that they didn't want Pia Toscano as their American Idol. They voted for other singers and said that they no longer wanted boring ballads akin to those sung by the great diva's of the 90's and early 00's. They said they'd rather listen to voices that are more unique. They said this with their phones, text messages, and online voting. In the end...it didn't matter.
Pia Toscano is a remarkable talent with incredible looks and a voice to make any Top 40 diva jealous. She held her self with dignity befitting the most practiced talent. For some people it was her biggest flaw. I'd even wager it was the reason she was voted off. In the end the result was not what the people voted for.

Pia signed a recording contract with Interscope within days of "losing" on American Idol. There are so many problems with this that I can't even begin to cover them all. The biggest problem that I have is that this is remarkably unfair to the "winner" of the show. It also reduces the integrity of the show. It makes the premise of the show a fallacy and creates an audience that no longer cares for the outcome. I think Pia should have been a top 5 contestant on her talent alone. But the fact that she's signing a contract with the same company that will sign the eventual winner is a slap in the face. Not only will she break an album before the winner but she'll be raking in the money far sooner than the winner. If I were a contestant still on the show I'd be trying to throw the show as soon as possible and testing the waters for my own contract.
Shout out for your favorite contestant and let me know what you think of Pia's contract.

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• American Idol's Pia Toscano to Make Big Announcement (news.instyle.com)

Ground Level Trampoline

When we purchased our new home back in October we knew we wanted to put our trampoline at ground level. We didn't know how...but some how we were going to have our trampoline in the ground. When moved in and started looking at the ground and getting used to the size and shape of things in our yard we were even more excited because we were looking at a yard that was bigger than we anticipated and thus gave us room for the trampoline and room to move. It was nice. Then warmer weather hit.

Our backyard is not finished and so basically it's just a leveled and graded dirt yard. On first observation we thought "this will be easy". On first attempt to push a shovel into the ground though our thoughts changed to "this is going to be work". We spent one weekend digging and digging. We dug a hole roughly two and half feet deep and six to seven feet wide. Not bad...except for the aching backs and the overwhelmed feeling of defeat. The following week we pulled out the big guns...pick axes. Yup that helped expand that hole about two feet wider and six inches deeper. Not what you would call progress. So then came the next big weekend with nice weather. We pulled out the pick axes and got to work...it wasn't thirty minutes later that we 

One of the volunteers

called Sun Rental to get a backhoe. Now the production went into overdrive (is that getting archaic? not sure if people even know what overdrive is...I'm not even sure I know what overdrive is). After riding the backhoe across our front yard (I hope we didn't break any sprinkler pipes) and getting the hang of the controls I was able to accomplish in 5 minutes what took us 5 hours to accomplish previously. We had the backhoe for "half a day" which basically meant 4-5 hours of running time. We only needed 2 hours to accomplish our goal of getting the tramp in the ground.

The bonus...my back wasn't aching and I got to play with a really big Tonka Toy. But our story doesn't end quite yet.  You see our trampoline is a perfect circle...unfortunately the hole was not. This means that there were places with little gap and other places with HUGE gaps between the edge of the tramp and "level" ground. So we knew we had more work. We had to find an effective way of backfilling without undoing all of our work. The weather, fortunately, turned cool giving us time to contemplate the best way to accomplish our backfill project. We thought of using palates and even found six of them that we could use to create a sort of wall to push the dirt against without it filling in our hole. This seemed like a good idea until we found the palates to be too big or too small or ultimately less useful. So we contemplated investing a little money into the project (aside from the very reasonable fee for the backhoe) and buy some lumber to rig up against the legs of the tramp to create our wall. We were ready to purchase a couple sheets of plywood and just attach or lean them up against the legs. It would have been reasonable but a new alternative came to the rescue. Karen's dad was getting ready to remove the wood from his cargo trailer and suggested that we could use it for our tramp. He in all of his generosity and general awesomeness not only removed the lumber and delivered it, he also cut it to size, and then attached the lumber with brackets to the legs using his own tools on his own time (which is really saying a lot since he's an electrical contractor). So now we had free lumber, and labor to help us get the job done. Unfortunately the lumber from his trailer didn't quite cover the whole job so we went and got the last little bit that was needed. Again Karen's dad helped cut, and attach it to the legs. Our project was making progress again just in time for some good weather, we hoped.

Friday night we were planning our Saturday activities and looked out the window to see rain. It seemed our backfill operation was a bust. Thankfully when we woke up we found that the sun was out and the clouds had dropped their fill rather quickly over night giving it some time with the wind to dry up a little. Karen went to an appointment first thing in the morning and I started digging. The kids had lovingly named each of the mounds that surrounded the trampoline and when they saw me cutting away at Pop-Tart Mountain and Lego Mountain they were a little put out but they joined in and started helping me move rocks, boulders, and dirt into the gaps around the tramp. This is when the aching back came back into the project. I moved a 200-300 lbs. boulder half way across our yard to fill in one of the gaps and another one of nearly the same size about half that distance. It was a good work out. By the time Karen returned from her appointment I had done about a third of the total work already. When she got back the work really started. We had about three quarters of the back fill done by 11:00 a.m. and we were ready for a break. We went to Costco to get a new wheel barrow so we could move dirt from Pop-Tart Mountain to Hot Wheel Valley without all the back strain. By 2:30 we had what you see in the following pictures. Leave your comments below.